Cheap Redrock M2 copy from India

[Phil Bloom]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...e=STRK:MESE:IT

Fascinating. I have bought a Matte Box from these guys and it was fine for the price. But now they have made a 35mm adaptor, follow focus and gears!!

They have already made cheap steadicams!!

It looks a very similar set up to the M2, even down to the rail mount...they need to link to footage or something to get people to buy it. But...that price...

I can't imagine it can be up to the quality of the M2. The guys at Redrock make theirs in dust proof factories and know their adaptors, it's what they have been doing for years now. My M2 is one solid tank of an adaptor. Be interested to see how well constructed this one is!

[Rafael Lopes]

I doubt anyone who knows 35mm adapters will go for this at this price. There's no sample footage, no technical specifications, no nothing. Plus there's a fair amount of well established 35mm adapter vendors out there who have earned the publics' trust. It's like you said, Phil, redrock has been doing this for ages and it costs just a little bit more than the indian version...no one will go for that.

[David W. Jones]

Funny, that was about the initial reaction when the Redrock stuff was released,
back when the P+S Technik Mini35 was the only game in town.

[Rafael Lopes]

The only 2 differences were:
1 - P+S Technik Mini35 costs about 3 times more than redrock
2 - Redrock didn't show up on ebay with a product that nobody ever heard about. They hit the forums, they showed footage, they answered questions, they worked on getting the costumer's trust.

I'm the first one to root for new products that will shake the market up and as far as I am concerned this could be the greatest adapter ever...they just can't expect people to pay the same they pay for a well established product such as redrock for a product they have never heard of. Other than that all I can say is GO "Redrock India"! Just bare in mind that there's no market without marketing ;-)

[Phil Bloom]

if their product is good the best thing they could have done was to send a few out to some of the senior guys on these forums to try them out. If they had confidence in their product that is!

[Igor Babic]

Check out what people buy from him in his detailed feedback profile, and you will see what they are after.

[Timothy D. Allen]

This seriously just looks like the payed $45 to Redrock for the DIY kit, built it, and are just trying to pawn it off on eBay as their own deal. Seems pretty lame to me. Where is their real website?

[Bob Hart]

"Cinedof", in the case of the Indian adaptor written as "Cine Dof", was a name applied to a development of an alternative adaptor by Toenis Liivamaegi discussed here on dvinfo.

Are the two adaptors Indian in origin or a resell of existing adaptors? If they are "new" it seems there is a bit of a fast and loose happening with regard the brand name. The theme travels full circle it seems.

[Toenis Liivamaegi]

Absolutely nothing to do with our brand, but that`s to be expected.
Those bollywooden products are so not worth the money.
Years ago I ordered something from them, just cheap knockoff stuff for those who want to own rather to use or operate.

I wonder if anyone have had a pleasant experience with businesses in India other than the money saved or souvenirs brought. I`ve worked for world class corporation as art director and dealt with all the savings that India can provide, really big savings.

Cheers,
T

[Tim Sargent]

I have had bad experience buying from India.

I bought a cheap stabiliser, the build quality was shocking, very very flimsy - and support wasnt great. I managed to get a refund - but will never buy from them again.

Its true - you get what you pay for.

The copy of a DOF adaptor looks shockingly poor.

[David Garvin]

Originally Posted by Phil Bloom

Fascinating. I have bought a Matte Box from these guys and it was fine for the price.

These guys seem to sell under a couple eBay user names, but I bought a matte box from them which looked EXACTLY like the Cinevate mattebox but about 1/2 the price that Cinevate charged. What a mark-up!

[Paul Mailath]

that's exactly what they're counting on - people that go for a cheaper price without thinking about the consequences.

The reason they can be so much cheaper is that .. they copy - that's it, no original research, design, experimentation - they just steal someone else's ideas.

[John Papadopoulos]

A copy will never be as good as the original. If the quality was equal or better, it wouldn't be marketed as a copy and it wouldn't look like one.

[David Garvin]

Originally Posted by Paul Mailath

that's exactly what they're counting on - people that go for a cheaper price without thinking about the consequences.

The reason they can be so much cheaper is that .. they copy - that's it, no original research, design, experimentation - they just steal someone else's ideas.

If you're responding to my post (which was directly above yours) I would disagree.

The Cinevate/Indian mattebox is not what I would ever refer to as an industry-standard design. The only place I had previously (or since) seen this particular mattebox (with its internal "shutters", a rounded-rectangle hood, "twist lock" screws to tighten the french-flag that slides into a slot on the top and thing foam rings that screw into the mattebox) is at Cinevate. I think it's much more likely that Cinevate found a place that manufactures these matteboxes inexpensively and marks them up significantly. Even deciding to custom mold the parts in the exact same way would be more work than it was worth. There are much simpler matte-box designs to "steal"

I would be completely stunned if this Indian company decided to copy Cinevate's "unique" design. I do not think the Indian version is so much cheaper because it's stolen from Cinevate, I think it's much more likely that the Cinevate version is merely overpriced and makes them a nice profit. Frankly, I don't think the item is that well designed in the first place and is certainly not worth $500.

[Bob Hart]

In other unrelated products the genuine branded spare part may be subbed out to another manufacturer and that manufacturer markets an unbranded part, or the product is designed to integrate an existing trade part which becomes rebadged or repackaged as factory genuine.

You may find that the mattebox of Indian origin is a faithful copy. The only way to identify Dennis' mattebox as an OEM would be to look for indentical process marks and trim area where dies join and injection ports leave waste attached, or cast-in part numbers and matchmarks.

Even if the mattebox is sourced in India, the mark-up would represent the cost of transport, then import country labour costs such as collect, unpack, inventory, assess build quality or assemble if knocked down, repack, accountancy and taxes, inventory and depatch. Whilst it represents a high percentage of original cost, import country costs themselves may not be unreasonable.

Only Dennis or the OEM manufactuer if there is one, knows the answer to all this speculation which of course is unfounded unless the two items can be compared in the same space side-by-side.